


a bad sense of (blank)

by squidmemesinc



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-25 16:58:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4968958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squidmemesinc/pseuds/squidmemesinc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tooru is lost. He is lost in the worst place to be lost, too—near Shiratorizawa high school. And phone is also dead. It’s perfect, really. This is literally the best thing that’s ever happened to him. He loves his parents so much for making him come down here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a bad sense of (blank)

**Author's Note:**

> Hhhhhhhhhh
> 
> I started writing this in July without any ideas for a plot and I think maybe you can tell.
> 
> This was originally gonna be for my friend Ash but I'm not sure if they're into HQ much anymore??? Sweats,,

Tooru is lost. He is lost in the worst place to be lost, too—near Shiratorizawa high school. And phone is also dead. It’s perfect, really. This is literally the best thing that’s ever happened to him. He loves his parents so much for making him come down here.

Truthfully, he’s not all that worried that he’ll run into That One Guy. What are the chances of that, honestly? The area is huge, and there are a bajillion people. More than that, he’s just frustrated that he spent all day walking around an unfamiliar campus, tuning out the tour guide, and alternating between Facebook and Twitter, and now he’s unable to get back on his own. He could ask any of the people milling about to use their phone, but he swears this stationary shop looked familiar—

Tooru continues to wander, trying to follow the trail of businesses towards what looks like a more urban area and winds up—at a park. He sighs and throws his hands up. It’s getting late now, and there are fewer people around. In fact all of them seem to be heading away from him. No parents have their kids out at this park right now, no one seems to want to walk their dog here, and apparently going for walks outside in nature is out of style. This is awful.

He decides to walk through the park.

This turns out to be a bad idea for two reasons. One, the park is huge. Enormous, even. He thought he had seen a street on the other side of where he had been standing originally, but it just turned out to be a place to rent bikes. Two, despite putting even the remotest possibility that this could ever happen out of his mind, the next person he encounters is Ushijima Wakatoshi.

He sucks in a sharp breath and abruptly turns around, hoping he hasn’t been seen, but they were the same distance away from each other when he recognized Ushijima. Despite his powerwalking, Ushijima is _running_ , and if he were to do the same, it wouldn’t be subtle enough for him to escape. Besides, he’s not sure if he could outrun him if he tried. So he bites down hard on his teeth when Ushijima taps him on the shoulder and turns around.

“Wow, Ushiwaka-chan! Fancy seeing you here.”

“I live three blocks away.”

“I definitely didn’t know that!” This is true.

Ushijima pauses, with a slight furrow in his brow. He must not have been running very long. He looks completely dry, and his breathing is regular. He’s wearing pants even though it’s 30 degrees. “Were you looking for me?”

Tooru’s jaw is beginning to hurt. “No. I am here on business, and that business is concluded, so I’ll be leaving now.” He turns around and starts walking, quickly, in the other direction.

“Wait.”

It sounds like a command, and despite his overwhelming desire to go _away_ , he stops and faces Ushijima again.

"Do you drink coffee?"

He could lie. Ushijima is far too straightforward to ask questions that don't at all further the conversation. So of course, he knows what's coming after he answers. "Only with lots of milk and sugar," he says, offering a bright smile that he doesn’t even try to pass off as real. 

"Come get coffee with me."

Tooru continues to smile. "Why should I?"

"Because I want to talk to you." Ushijima, large and commanding and serious, has a way of phrasing his sentences as if he is either Tooru's father or five years old. Tooru almost wants to laugh, but instead he is just irritated. 

However, he is irritated and hungry. And of course, if he suffers through Ushijima's company for half an hour, he can get him to tell him how to get home. Or even better, use his phone, and they won't even have to speak to each other any more than necessary. 

He chews on the words forming a begrudging 'yes' for a while, doing his best to look put off by the thought. Finally he says, "Fine, but you're buying. And I want a muffin."

"Fine," Ushijima replies without so much as nodding. 

He starts up without Tooru, who has to jog a moment to catch up. Ushijima doesn't make any attempt at conversation as they walk, perhaps somehow knowing it wasn't in the terms of the coffee. Which is fine with Tooru. It'll make it a lot harder for strangers to imagine they're friends. 

The coffee shop doesn't have muffins, which strikes him as incredibly weird, but they have paninis, and Tooru orders one of them along with the biggest (and most expensive) caramel frappaccino on the menu, smiling at the barista as he asks for an extra pump of caramel. 

They find a table and sit, waiting for their orders to arrive. 

"Why are you here?" Ushijima asks when they've been down for a grand total of two seconds. 

Tooru glances out the window and rolls his eyes at a passing dog and owner, wondering where she was when he was walking through the park, sparing Ushijima this motion only because he's sure there will be many more. "Because you asked me to come to Shiratorizawa, and I live to please you."

"We’re both graduating in a few months. The tournaments are all over," he replies, choosing to only interpret half of Tooru's statement as sarcasm, or perhaps none at all. "Why are you really here?"

Tooru bites the inside of his cheek and fixes Ushijima with a bored stare. "Because I'm lost."

"You must have been in the area for some reason. Before you got lost."

"Ushiwaka-chan," Tooru sighs, leaning forward over the table, "why do you care so much what I'm doing?  Don't you have your own life to live?"

His brow furrows. He looks confused by Tooru's question. "Yes." He waits for him to answer anyway.

Tooru sighs again. He's already feeling worn down just from being in Ushijima's presence for more than their usual five minutes, outside of game time. But at the same time, this particular instance somehow feels less grating than previous ones, since it hasn't been preceded by a volleyball game that Tooru was on the losing side of. He's just lost now, and there's no way Ushijima can make that into an 'I told you so' of any sort.

A barista brings their coffee and Tooru takes a sip of his.

Maybe there is a way for Ushijima to turn it around on him, but he hasn't yet. His mind seems to stick to one track at a time, and he runs down it to the end of the line before making a turn. Tooru is sure that if he tried to change the subject, Ushijima would steer him back over and over until he relented. As if he has to win at everything, including conversations. 

"How about you guess?" he tries, tilting his head in challenge. He bites the tip of his straw and sucks more of the drink up through the sliver of an opening. 

Ushijima gives a small shrug and shakes his head. "I have no idea."

Tooru narrows his eyes. Sometimes he talks like a dimwit, but Tooru knows he's smarter than he looks. "Are you trying to be coy or something? It doesn't suit your personality."

The furrow reappears between his eyebrows. Small victories, Tooru thinks. "You don't know my personality."

Something about this seems honest and less pigheaded than everything else he's said so far. Tooru ignores the feeling and waves his hand. "Sure I do. You're like Tobio-chan. You want to be the best at volleyball and you don't care whose toes you step on to become the best." The same girl who brought their coffee brings his panini and he smiles at her before returning to Ushijima. "You should have asked him to come to Shiratorizawa."

Ushijima had looked thrown off by the mention of 'Tobio-chan' briefly, but he either realized that Tooru meant Kageyama or he discarded it as unimportant. He stares at Tooru until he begins to feel unsettled. Tooru picks up the panini and takes a bite, hoping Ushijima will say something before he's swallowed. 

He doesn't. "What?" Tooru mutters. 

"You dislike me."

Now Tooru stares. "The last time we spoke you spent most of the conversation talking down to me and insulting my choices. Most of our conversations have been like that, actually." He takes another bite and lets Ushijima process this. And then he thinks about it himself. He looks out the window, vaguely realizing the panini is really good. "I don't dislike you. I just don't particularly care about what you want, which seems to be something you're not used to." Ushijima apparently considers this. He takes a sip of his coffee for the first time that Tooru has seen, and Tooru continues eating. 

"I wasn't trying to insult you, Oikawa."

Tooru takes back what he'd thought earlier. Somehow, _this_ feels like the most honest thing Ushijima has ever said to him. He doesn't know how to feel about it. On some level, he'd always known this was true, but it never has fit with the way he wanted to think of him. The whole 'wanting him to come to Shiratorizawa so he could have a successful career as a high school volleyball player, because they both care that much about volleyball and could make each other better' thing always seemed very forceful and selfish to him, but now he gets the sense that there's more to it than that. "You should learn to say more than one sentence at a time, Ushiwaka-chan. I can't read between your very narrow lines, and I'm sure I'm not the only one."

Ushijima almost looks embarrassed. He picks up his coffee again and looks down at the table when he speaks, keeping his eyebrows drawn together. "I suppose I thought at this point we might be on more agreeable terms."

"That's still only one—"

"Friends." He takes another sip of his coffee as if he can swallow down the word, but it's already out. He's staring again. 

Tooru doesn't day anything for a while. Ushijima wants to be friends with him? _Why?_ he wants to ask. But then again, what is anyone's motivation for wanting to be friends with another person?

Ushijima changes the subject surprisingly gracefully after a full minute of silence. "You still haven't told me why you came here."

Tooru is not sure how grateful he is that he didn't get a chance to respond to that. He hadn't decided on an answer. However, this way he'll have more time to think about it. "I was looking at colleges."

"My college?"

"It doesn't _belong_ to you," Tooru can't resist quipping, "but yes." It irks him that they both know that he knows what college Ushijima is going to. He pops the last bite of his panini into his mouth. 

Ushijima looks at him, expecting more. Tooru finds this ironic.

"My parents want me to go there,” he supplies. It's not an untrue thing, but at this point it feels a little deceptive to act so standoffish. 

"It has a very good volleyball program."

Tooru inspects his drink for a moment. There’s an acceptable amount of whipped cream on top. "I know." 

"You should come."

Tooru sets his cup down on the table a little forcefully and looks dramatically upward. "What a comically perfect missed opportunity for personal growth! But I don't know what I was expecting. Can you show me where the train station is? My phone is dead, and I've gotten coffee with you, so as far as I'm concerned I should be free now."

Ushijima rubs his hand across his forehead, looking pained. Something which fills Tooru with a particular glee. "That was—" He doesn't finish, but Tooru still waits. He's prepared to offer suggestions should no ending arrive for that sentence. 'Wrong of me to say?' 'Definitely a missed opportunity for personal growth, ha ha, you're so right Oikawa?' ' _Rude?_ '

What he says instead is "I'm sorry."

Tooru leans back in his chair and crosses his arms over his chest petulantly, attempting to ward off the strange sincerity of this unexpected apology. He knows he should be gracious, because here is the personal growth, but instead he'd rather be difficult. "I don't appreciate it when other people tell me to do things. I get enough of that from my parents, thanks." He sniffs, and Ushijima says nothing, just blinks at him once before picking up his coffee again. "You're probably going to get what you want anyway. They really want me to go there," he says bitterly. 

Ushijima seems to think about this for a bit longer than the rest of the things Tooru's given him today. "You could be happy anywhere. You're attractive and intelligent and have good social skills."

Tooru chokes on his coffee. “Too weird, Ushiwaka-chan! You can’t just make me go to coffee with and say you want to be my friend and then compliment me three times in the same sentence!” He emphasizes by pointing at him, then curls his finger back into his fist and jams his hands into his lap.

“Why not?”

“Urrrgg!” He leans his elbow on the table and covers his mouth with his hand while looking pointedly out the window. For some reason he’s smiling, and this feels really weird, but the whole situation is funny. That’s gotta be why he’s smiling, of course. It’s funny. It’s weird.

“Are you embarrassed?”

“Stop it! Stop talking!” He covers his mouth again after he’s nearly shouted this at Ushijima.

He stops. Tooru watches a man with a shiba walk by, then a woman carrying an umbrella even though it wasn’t supposed to rain today. “Did you want me to show you where the train station is?” Ushijima says slowly after a full minute, sounding slightly apprehensive.

“Yes please,” Tooru says with his mouth still covered.

**XXX**

The coffee shop was very near the train station, actually, though it was in the opposite direction Tooru had been looking before he ran into Ushijima. He thinks. He’s not entirely sure of the geography of this place, and he spends a minute mentally trying to sort out if they walked past these businesses on the way there before deciding that he doesn’t care, and then he gives up.

“Thank you for getting coffee with me,” Ushijima says suddenly. Tooru almost hadn’t realized they weren’t talking.

Somehow it doesn’t feel right to be rude or even sassy right now. “Yeah. Thanks for…paying.”

“You’re welcome.”

There’s a beat of silence in which Tooru seems to be the only one uncomfortable. “It was a nice school,” he says quietly.

“You should—consider it.” Tooru catches the way he reroutes his sentence. “We’re here.” He stops walking. Tooru goes an extra step before he stops.

Tooru glances at the display saying when the next train will be, then the clock next to it. There’s a couple of minutes before it comes. “It was nice of you to show me the train station.” Suddenly he doesn’t remember how to make small talk.

Ushijima just nods. He’s still wearing his running clothes. Tooru wonders if he’s going to go for his run now or just give up on it for the day.

Tooru makes a sudden decision. He clenches and unclenches his hand at his side, then holds it out. “Give me your phone.”

Ushijima looks at him for a second, then cautiously pulls it out of the pocket of his pants and places it in Tooru’s palm. Tooru flips it open and taps at it until his number is in the contacts. Then he sends himself a text, though he can’t bring himself to say anything other than ‘Ushiwaka-chan,’ but it’s enough that he’ll have the number.

“I might have more questions about the school,” Tooru explains, pressing the device back into Ushijima’s hand. He pockets it and smiles. Tooru tries to remember if he’s seen him smile before. He looks younger—cuter. He shakes his head slightly. The speakers in the station crackle on and announce that Tooru’s train is arriving, so he takes a couple of steps backwards towards the platform.

He debates waving as he steps into the car, but Ushijima decides for him by doing it first, and then he can’t be rude. He sinks down into one of the seats and takes out his phone before remembering it’s dead. But he knows there’s at least one text waiting for him.


End file.
